Portside

Reader Comments - Karen Lewis starts recovery; Philadelphia Students Support Teachers; Towards a Socialist America; War on the Islamic State; Arming Rebels Does Not Work; Silicon Valley and Organized Labor; New Voters in Ferguson; Investing in Junk Armies; Gaza Reconstruction; Doomed Without a Wealth Tax; Rosenberg Sons' Statement; Announcements - New York and Chicago events; Palestine solidarity

Rebuilding labor means more than ticking off new non-white members, however, it also means transformation—and when it comes to workers of color that means integrating individual on-the-job concerns with “off-the-clock” community concerns like climate change, racial profiling, mass incarceration and, certainly, police violence. And therein lies the rub for organized labor as it looks toward the future.

Hagan presents herself as above the fray, but she is propelled by a populist mobilization that will help get out the vote, despite the voting changes and despite the off-year malaise afflicting voters generally and Democratic voters particularly.

In the context of the Cold War, there’s an argument to be made that this strategy worked—the Soviet Union collapsed, after all—but in the actual conflicts, the outcomes were ambiguous and the wars longer and bloodier than they might have been otherwise. (Angola’s civil war lasted 27 years.)

This is terrorism. It is the use or implication of violence to achieve a political end. And as in so many other instances of terrorism (harassment of abortion providers, for instance), aimed at women, the government is not protecting its citizens.

Long before the shooting of Michael Brown, official racial-isolation policies primed Ferguson for this summer’s events.

American businesses are paying out a historically low proportion of their income in the form of wages and salaries. But the Jimmy John’s employment agreement is one small piece of evidence that workers, especially those without advanced skills, are also facing various practices and procedures that leave them worse off, even apart from what their official hourly pay might be.

Moroccan unions call for a 24 hour national strike on October 29 to protest cuts in pensions and subsidies for gasoline and fuel oil. These cuts have been demanded by the International Monetary Fund.

Ebola facts; Black colleges in trouble; Unwholesome Whole Foods; Blue-state diaspora; Striking for the boss

To put it bluntly, when confronting IS and its band of lightly armed irregulars, a reputedly professional military, American-trained and -armed, discarded its weapons and equipment, cast its uniforms aside, and melted back into the populace. What this behavior couldn’t have made clearer was that U.S. efforts to create a new Iraqi army, much-touted and funded to the tune of $25 billion over the 10 years of the American occupation had failed miserably.